AIPAC och Demokraterna

Anser ni att en demokrat kan bli vald till USAs president utan uppbackning från AIPAC eller vore det politiskt självmord?

Om AIPAC betalar och påverkar båda sidor vad blir då skillnaden i USAs mellanösternpolitik om en AIPAC-stödd (ett krav?) demokrat skulle bli USAs nästa president?

I first met Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama almost ten years ago when, as my representative in the Illinois state senate, he came to speak at the University of Chicago. He impressed me as progressive, intelligent and charismatic. I distinctly remember thinking 'if only a man of this calibre could become president one day.'

On Friday Obama gave a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Chicago. It had been much anticipated in American Jewish political circles which buzzed about his intensive efforts to woo wealthy pro-Israel campaign donors who up to now have generally leaned towards his main rival Senator Hillary Clinton.

Reviewing the speech, Ha'aretz Washington correspondent Shmuel Rosner concluded that Obama "sounded as strong as Clinton, as supportive as Bush, as friendly as Giuliani. At least rhetorically, Obama passed any test anyone might have wanted him to pass. So, he is pro-Israel. Period."

Congress, as Pat Buchanan trenchantly put it way back before Gulf War I, is "Israeli-occupied territory," so it doesn't matter that a war with Iran isn't in American interests. To the politicians who cater to the Israel lobby, there is no daylight between Israeli and American interests; but of course there are significant differences, which have only been exacerbated in the post-9/11 era. We desperately need to stave off the rising influence of extremism in the Muslim world, and yet our government insists on unconditionally taking Tel Aviv's side no matter what the issue or how blatantly unjust Israeli behavior is – due to the unrivaled power of the Israel lobby as a force in American politics. In 1997, legislators were asked to rate lobbies, and they put AIPAC in the number two spot, just below the AARP but ahead of the National Rifle Association and the AFL-CIO. Yes, the Israel lobby has just as much clout in the Democratic Party as the labor unions – if not more – which means that we'll never see a foreign policy that puts America first coming from that side of the aisle.